In an article about media and social struggles, post-operaist theorist Maurizio Lazzarato juxtaposes the traditional paradigm of representation with the paradigm of the event. In the paradigm of the event, "images, signs and statements contribute to allowing the world to happen. Images, signs and statements do not represent something, but rather create possible worlds."
From this point of view, the imageries and statements created by social movements are not merely an instrumental tool to mobilise support or to enlighten the public about something that is already there. They also help to create critical concepts and political subjectivities in the first place.

But how does this actually work? Looking at the media used at the EuroMayDay Parades in Hamburg may give hints to answers. Some criticise the excessive creativity displayed in EuroMayDay parades as an arty claim to super-coolness of some priviledged would-be creatives. Others regard the words, images and performances as representations of what it means to live precariously. But they can also be "read" as part of a wider process to produce knowledge about precarious working and living, and a quest to turn these everyday experiences into political struggles.

Some may ask why a posting on indymedia UK reports about a movement in a German city. My reason is that protest travels across borders and languages; inspirations, thinking and practices move forward and backwards. I collected the links below in the course of a research project, not as an active participant in the EuroMayDay Hamburg process. So many details are probably missing and corrections would be welcome.

The EuroMayDay Parade came to Hamburg in 2005, the first year of europe-wide Euromayday parades. Since then, other cities in Germany have joined. In 2010, Bremen participated for the second time, the small towns of Hanau (report) and Tübingen both assembled for the fourth time for MayDays of the precarious, Dortmund celebrated it's first EuroMayDay (report), and Berlin took a break from mass-parades to prevent EuroMayDay from becoming a mere ritual, while taking the 1st of May as a starting point to develop next steps for future MayDays of the precarious. Like activists in Berlin, those in Hamburg are planning, plotting and communicating to prevent closure and gelling of the EuroMayDay Parade.

EuroMayDay Hamburg parade 010 | portal | website | facebook and some articles [de 1 | 2 | 3 | 4] [en 1 | 2 | . . .]

Over the last 5 years, Euromayday Hamburg has created public spaces where 'precarisation of work and life' is visibly and audibly on the agenda. This involves the production of radical, open imageries to express what precarity is, what it feels like, what it means. Euromayday Hamburg has experimented with performances, interventions, body-sculpting, posters, flyers, buttons, to name only a few. These imageries circulate before, during and after the EuroMayDay parades, in print, video, image, audio, as mural and embodied performances in urban space. They appear in corporate mass media, autonomous media or on corporate platforms on the web. The Hamburg EuroMayDay parade linked the issue of precarisation to existing struggles - against Neo-nazism, gentrification, neoliberal globalisation; around migration, mobility, access and appropriation, right to the city, the welfare state, education, labour, the economic crisis.

The first Euromayday Parade in Hamburg 2005 emphasised issues of migration with participation of nolager (report) and a "protective marriage carriage"; and practices of collective appropriation of wealth (pic | report) [report 1 | 2 | 3 | facebook-video]. In the weeks before the Parade, a "MayDay Mobil" toured through Hamburg as an information and mobilisation vehicle, where people could watch videos, listen to broadcasts and make their point with the help of life-size cardboard figures, paper and pen and other accessories.

Before the EuroMayDay Parade 2006, a collection of mobilisation posters posters from Milan, Berlin, Liege and Sevilla was circulated. A Hamburg crew produced a series of radio programs in collaboration with the MayDay Mobil and a free radio station [announcement | mp3s]. Inspired by the Milan Imbattibili (article), superhero buttons and a psycho-test flyer were produced. The day before the parade, some precarious superheroes did an intervention (media coverage). At the parade, the protective marriage carriage was present again. [trailer | report]

The superhero theme continued in 2007. As the 2006 intervention had legal consequences (report 1 | 2 | 3), the figure of the precarious superheroes was used for solidarity actions as well as to disseminate the understanding of precarity as a contentious issue (call) . At several occasions (1 | 2 | 3), a mobile photo studio was set up where people could slip into a superhero costume, explain via speech bubbles why they were superheroes ("because I reimburse myself for overtime in stationary") and have their picture taken. At the EuroMayDay Parade, a proper MC proceeded to "pimp" participants into superheros (video 1 | 2 | report). Superheroes also took the issue of precarity to the G8 protests in Heiligendamm (call | pic). Insisting on plurivocality, the EuroMayDay Hamburg circle did not confine itself to the figure of precarious superheroes. One new figure was Multi-Trude, a manga-inspired puppet wearing a dress made from one-pound bags. As in previous years, a protective marriage vehicle was present, this time as a cabriolet. The trailer combines the subcultural repertoire of urban parcours running with the popular bollywood genre. The 2007 poster visualises the double-facedness and multiplicity once more.

In 2008, Neonazis mobilised for a demonstration at the 1st of May in Hamburg. EuroMayDay faced the task to combine the parade with the counter-demonstrations. They drew on an important element of precarity: chosen, imposed or restricted mobility (call). Under the slogan "Euromayday is swarming", EuroMayDay grew wings: Kitted out with all sorts of vehicles, a mobile parade collected people in town and moved towards the blocade of the Nazi march (video | speeches | report).

2009, like in many other EuroMayDay cities, the overarching theme in Hamburg was "Euromayday crisis-proof". After all, so the call, dealing with crisis is part of precarious life. Precarious people recorded no losses in stocks and shares, no bancruptcies, savings remained stable at zero, and their work remained, as before the crisis, characterised by precarious income, unemployment or internships. Many visualisations and slogans were brainstormed and discussed, many of them appeared in the parade which went for the first time to "Hafencity", a newly gentrified neighbourhood. It was led by a vehicle with a giant carrot tied to its driver cabine, following the incentive like the proverbial mule follows the carrot, and like the precarious worker is seduced by the multiple promises of precarity. Much glitter celebrated "Glamour precaire" in an evocation of the roaring 20s; shoes were thrown onto the prestigious building of the Elbphilharmonie; some people sprayed shoeprints onto the pavement; slogans printed on simple A4 sheets were pinned to bags and T-shirts. The poster played on robot-like body sculptures, playing on the russian meaning of the word robot = work as well as the incessant functioning demanded by precarious workers. The personal side of precarity was emphazised in the popular format of a photo-love-story. [pics | video (1 | 2) | action | events]

In 2010, in connection with the Right to the City movement, Euromayday asked how to re-start the City (posters, stickers, tape) and turn Hamburg into Sim City. If "the city is our factory", then there will be workers' assemblies. Additionally, the Hamburg 2010 parade picked up on imageries from Alice in Wonderland. The rabbit with his panicky mumble ("Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!") has scuttled through the EuroMayDay propaganda for years (2005 | 2006), and took center stage in some of the 2010 posters (Geneva | Milan | Lausanne). In Hamburg, the Cheshire Cat was taken to embody the omnipresent grin of precarity. In the shape of cut-out masks, it appeared in an action against expensive rents, and later led the parade, where it multiplied. "Alice im Wunderland – Die Förderung, die ich fordere" (the support I demand) was also the label for a campaign: Alice, who is on a benefits scheme, wishes to take up a course at the arts school. Together with friends and allies, she aims to convince the job-center to recognise this as regular further education [call | route | report | video (1 | 2) | pics (1 | 2)].

At the parade itself, people helped themselves to stickers displayed in transparent shower-curtains stuck to the vehicles and to the green-and-white tape with the inscription "the city is our...". Whereever the parade passed, city furniture like bins, lamp posts, billboards, advertising pillars, railings were covered in stickers and tape. Up to the very end, people grabbed the cheshire cat cards to make themselves masks. Others wrote on speech bubbles, familiar from previous parades, and left them in a custom-made bubble tree at a super market, one of the contested locations.

In 2005, one of the Hamburg EuroMayDay circle expressed a crucial point of the EuroMayDay tactics in an email to the EuroMayDay mailing list:
"The most impressing thing for me was: It really was a space of communication! Through the overemphsized self-representation and self-agitation, forms of expression were found that really taught me new things and allowed me to do things I don't do in the tight skin of the rooms structured by the hegemonial majority-discourses."

In the same year, the Milan-based group chainworkers described the EuroMayDay Parade Milan as a social medium:
"Mayday is a "social media" and for this represents a way to put and put oneself in relation, cooperate and conspire. It's a communication tool that enables social subjects to represent and participate relations, unwilling to be victim of the reproduction of the goods. Its result goes beyond any definition and constantly exceeds itself. And really it's a network of individualities more than political organisations that has created the parade, each with his own story, with his own load of desires, passions and demands."

On most of the pictures linked from this article, this communication is not really visible - we can see the product, but not the communication. An article about MayDay posters designed by graphic designers in collaboration with EuroMayDay activists demonstrates this process in text and images:
"The posters (...) are also participatory and collaborative — you place the stickers, you fill in the blank, you wear the mask, you rearrange the order. But they are also participatory within an urban environment, not just inviting the viewer to remake the image of poster, but by extension the image of the city itself."